See more of our coverage in your search results.
SAN FRANCISCO — It was deader than dead inside Chase Center after the first quarter Friday night, a fitting graveyard-like atmosphere on the eve of Halloween.
A motivated Luka Doncic exploded for 21 points and the Lakers built a 23-point lead by the time Steve Kerr gathered his team on the Warriors’ bench between periods.
They should have been spooked.
It was about the worst 12 minutes of basketball Golden State had played this season. It appeared Kerr’s squad was headed for a second rout in 10 days at the hands of the Lakers.
Then, everything flipped.
Austin Reaves got to the foul line on the Lakers’ first possession of the second quarter, extending their advantage to 25 points, 40-15, and that’s as wide as it would get.
De’Anthony Melton scored the next seven points, and Golden State went on to come all the way back — and then some — for a convincing 112-95 win over Doncic and the Lakers.
From the end of the first-quarter timeout on, the Warriors outscored Los Angeles 97-57.
“I don’t think I got too upset. I was trying to stay poised,” Kerr said. “We couldn’t have played any worse, and they knew it. I didn’t need to tell them. I just said it’s a long game.
“I don’t think I said anything about the modern NBA — I didn’t say anything to our players — but what I would [say] is 25, it’s the new 12. These games happen nightly in the league.”
They don’t usually happen quite like this, though. In fact, the Warriors’ Jekyll-and-Hyde act produced a kind of game that had never been seen in the NBA, at least not in recent history.
As poor as the opening period went for the Warriors, the second was just as bad for JJ Redick’s squad. By halftime, Golden State had erased the entire deficit to pull even at 53.
It was the first time since the NBA started tracking play-by-play (in 1996-97) that a team had trailed by 25 or more in the first half and come back to even the score at halftime.
The final 17-point margin of victory was the largest by any team that has trailed by 25 or more.
“These games are wild,” Kerr said. “With the pace and the 3-point shooting, there are just these wild swings. You just have to stay with it.”
While Kerr kept his cool after the disastrous first quarter, the assistants in the second row of the Warriors’ bench let the players have it. They committed 10 turnovers, double their number of made baskets, and seemed to be rattled by Doncic’s furor in his rematch with Yaxel Lendeborg.
Anthony Vereen was the “lead voice” in calling out the Warriors players, Steph Curry said.
“You need that kind of fire to see how we’re gonna respond,” Curry said.
And respond, they did.
After coughing up the ball 10 times in 12 minutes, they turned it over only six times over the remaining 36. Only one team ended up with a positive assist-to-turnover ratio, and it wasn’t the one that jumped to the early 25-point lead.
The Lakers ended up turning the ball over five more times than Golden State (20-15) and assisting on 13 fewer buckets (31-18).
“Everything went wrong,” Kerr said of the first quarter. “It was just a weird quarter. It was not anything strategy related. We didn’t change anything after the first quarter.
“Sometimes when you come back off a weeklong road trip and you have a day off, no shootaround, that first few minutes can be a little rough. That would be my excuse for tonight.”
In addition to his 21 first-quarter points, Doncic looked unstoppable as a playmaker, dishing out five assists. He finished with 37 points to best Curry’s 31, but he didn’t set up another Lakers bucket for the rest of the game.
“Luka had an unbelievable first quarter,” Curry said. “He looked very determined coming into tonight. Our offense got stagnant. Turnovers the first four or five minutes were deflating.
“We had a lot of chatter at the end of the first quarter, and it was kind of cool to see the second unit — just the overall execution on both ends in the second quarter.”
